Yahoo! Goes Bing in US, Canada

By Jeff Gamet

Aug 25th, 2010 10:37 AM EDT

Yahoo! officially made the switch from its own search engine technology to Microsoft’s Bing in the U.S. and Canada on Tuesday. The change is part of a multi-year deal between the two companies, and will later include a transition for Yahoo! to Microsoft’s adCenter some time in the fall.

The two companies struck the deal after a hostile takeover attempt by Microsoft went sour in 2009. The ten-year deal that lets Microsoft power Yahoo!’s searches, and in exchange Yahoo! becomes Microsoft’s exclusive partner for worldwide premium search advertisement revenue.

Microsoft is hoping to use its partnership with Yahoo! to finally make a significant inroads into the Internet search market and eat into Google’s share of the online ad revenue pie.

“This is a great milestone for Bing and Yahoo! and our customers, and we are happy to report the transition has gone smoothly and we feel great about the progress our search alliance has been making over the summer,” commented Microsoft’s Online Services Division vice president, Satya Nadella, on the company’s Bing Community blog.

For now, Yahoo!’s English-only Web, image and video searches are powered by Bing, but both companies promise additional markets will get added into the mix soon.